IntroductionJoyce Hansen, R.H.A., is a Board Certified Basic and Advanced Clinical Hypnosis Instructor for the (NGH) National Guild of Hypnosis and a Board Certified Instructor for the National Board of Hypnotherapy and Hypnotic Anaesthesiology. She is also Board Certified in Hypnotic Anaesthesia for Pain Management, A Certified Clinical Hypnotist by the Harte Center for Hypnosis and National Guild of Hypnotist, and an Instructor in course in Self-Hypnosis, Stress Management, Stress Management for the Physically challenged. Joyce and Chaplain Durbin have a two-day workshop on Medical Hypnotherapy.

Her additional and/or continuing studies include: St. John's University, Dept. of Psychology, Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy & Training, Parts Therapy with Charles Tebbets, and Guided Imagery. She is the author of "Stress management for the Physically Challenged." Her memberships include: National Guild of Hypnotist, International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Association, The National Board of Hypnotherapy and Hypnotic Anaesthesiology; International Association of Counselors and Therapist; and National Society of Clinical Hypnotherapist.

When I (Durbin) first began to research information concerning the false memory syndrome, Joyce shared with me a wealth of material on the subject. Thanks Joyce!

"The False Memory Syndrome:How It's Affecting the Use of Hypnosis"

Physical and sexual abuse within the family is one of the most devastating issues to sustain its belief in traditional family values. Even though the psychological, medical, legal and social service communities now recognize, persecute and threat such abuse perpetrated against women and children, the entire issue continues to engender anger and resentment. In addition, the subject is also unfortunately, prime for media sensationalism. Each publicized incident appears to become more bizarre than the last, including the allegations of widespread satanic rituals. Such a circus atmosphere leaves many bewildered as to who and what to believe.

Various psychological theories consider early childhood as the most critical aspect for formative behavior. Effective resolution of adult conflicts may include the integration of childhood memories and belief systems. Recalling or enhancing these memories can be accomplished through various regression technique, i.e. client-centered therapy, dream analysis, hypnosis or narcoanalysis.

Memory researchers continue to question the validity of memory recall and express an ever greater skepticism about the validity of childhood memory recall (especially the memory recall of very young children). However, in response to the allegations of physical/sexual abuse, the legal and mental health systems have given greater credence when allegations are made on the basis of "recovered memories." These "recovered memories" may be considered credible even if the event being remember occurred decades earlier. Twenty one states have extended the Statute of Limitations up to three years after initial memory recall. These "recovered memories" may be spontaneously recalled or recovered through therapeutic regression.

A standard memory metaphor is the mind as a computer recording and transferring events and emotions into a record file that can be accessed by various retrieval methods. The crux of the matter revolves around the validity of trauma amnesia and memory recall. Experimental studies show that all memory is not equally nor accurately recorded nor accurately recalled.

Further, memory can be manipulated and/or confabulated. When poorly trained or overzealous therapist enhance a client's memory based on a belief that certain client symptoms reflect repressed memories of sexual abuse, the possibility of creating false memories and subsequent false allegations is ripe.

The existence of a False Memory Syndrome as a valid psychological condition is still in its infancy of recognition, yet at the same time it is caught between a hotly contested battleground of pro and con adversaries.

The False Memory Syndrome supporters are composed of well respected medical and psychological researchers and practitioners and most importantly over 4,000 families who believed they have been falsely accused. Their adult children my come to believe in and accept, either on their own or through therapy, that they are victims of child abuse and torture.

While not denying or depreciating in any manner that such real abuse situations have and continue to occur, there appears to be false allegations being made that needlessly destroys families and places a client in even greater psychological trauma. Such concern led the March 1992 formation of FMSF - False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Those who do not support the idea of a False Memory Syndrome are composed of equally responded psychological clinicians who initially did not believe their client's allegations. They claim that prior to 1979 many therapist had neither the knowledge, training nor experience in trauma-related and dissociative disorders.

Their initial diagnosis were borderline schizophrenics hysterics, or manic depressive. At a certain point however, they became overwhelmed by the nature and burgeoning accounts of what they were hearing, and many were greatly troubled by the reports of satanic episodes.

As these memories continued to surface, a book that quickly captured the public's attention was Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. While neither author was a therapist (one being an incest victim) they wrote what came to be the Bible of sexual abuse. Their premise is that surface, but the mere recognition of feelings or subjective bodily sensations is enough to confirm literal abuse.

Subsequently, may women seek regression therapy to confirm vague feelings or unexplained dissociative symptoms and seek support through self-help groups and literature or related recovery programs.

Some therapists believed that it is their duty to have the client with these symptoms accept for their own good and "truth" of their abuse, and thus the healing process can begin. Unfortunately some clients become victims of abuse that never happened but somehow manifested itself as a "real" memory when regression techniques (including hypnosis) are misused by misguided therapists.

So, what does all this mean to hypnotherapy practitioners? It means that as part of this volatile debated issue, the use of hypnosis is currently in the hot media spotlight. It means that when hypnosis is used for memory regression, the validity of the elicited information should be considered questionable, rather than absolutely true. It may mean that the quality of memory may be highly variable depending on the nature of the information being recalled. Possibly the quality of memory also varies from person to person, i.e., some have better memory recall under hypnosis than others. When the hypnotherapist is asking questions, is the nature and phrasing of the response of the client? Ultimately, what it means is that as professional hypnotherapist we need to take great care and responsibility when engaged in regression work. We need to able aware that memory is not perfect, to be aware of potential for "suggestibility" to alter memory recall, and finally to recognize that issues of repressed memories, especially those of a traumatic sexual nature, cannot be proven merely by the use of hypnosis alone.

"What is the False Memory Controversy"

The false memory controversy is known to most of us through the media reports profiling stories with a general scenario of "fathers" being accused by their adult daughters of sexual abuse perpetrated on them as children. These accusations are a result of recovered memories which have been repressed due to trauma coming to light either through psychotherapy, the use of hypnotic regression or momentary experiences of flashbacks. Many of these women are diagnosed as suffering from symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. In addition they express vague feelings that something is wrong, and/or they lack memories from certain periods of their childhood.

Women with recovered memories have been considered to be just a legitimate a victim of sexual abuse as those women who have always had memory of their sexual abuse. Psychological support and treatment protocols stress the importance of establishing an integrated self and healing the inner child for both. However, once the issue of childhood sexual abuse left the therapy session and entered the legal system, the nature of such abuse now was perceived in an entirely different manner. The courts suddenly fund themselves in a quandary. How do you prosecute a criminal and immoral act on the basis of recovered memories that surface 10, 20, or 30 years after the alleged act?

What ensured is a controversy based on parents being prosecuted on charges of sexual abuse and therapist being prosecuted by accused parents on charges of incompetence and planting false memories in the mind of their vulnerable adult children either through hypnosis or constant allusion to sexual abuse explanation. Thus, the allegation of a "false memory."

One of this contentious atmosphere, the accusations and some of the more bizarre claims have made the false memory controversy a media dream for TV ratings. It may not be a "hot" controversy for the media, but it is a controversy for the media, but it is a controversy with serious implications for more than the accused and the accuser.

What is the False Memory controversy?: It is a family structure torn apart by accusations and denials and counter accusations and the counter denials. It can be where family communications links are broken, where suspicions may turn into bizarre accusations of extreme abuse and satanic overtones and the words "being in denial" are equally used by both sides.

It is a battleground for the mental health community where therapist not only find themselves taking sides but also having to defend their therapeutic interventions and reassess various training methods and issues of ethics and confidentially. For the therapists to find themselves as defendants in a third arty action, it opens a new arena that other third parties may try to hold any therapists accountable for the treatment program of their clients.

It is an atmosphere of discourse and rhetoric for courts to pass judgements on the validity of testimony based on recovered memory as well as the very nature of memory itself. The scientific community has been called upon to explain its research and propose theories of memory state. There are still open-ended questions as to how trauma affects memory and if memories really can be repressed or accurately recovered.

It is a confrontation of uncertainly for society to face. Who is to be blamed for failing to acknowledge the atrocities perpetrated against children? Does a part of society hide behind an elaborate denial by not wishing to confront the reality of sexual child abuse? Or, is society experiencing a mass hysteria phonomania stoked by media vicariously creating imaginary victims? It is a betrayal for those adults who have always known or come to realize that they truly had been sexually abused. They not only struggle and suffer with anger, guilt and shame, but now find their memories being challenged and questioned, as if it never really happened.

It is an accusatory hiding place where some sexual abuser can perpetrate their denial or guilt. Deception is promulgated and neither side is allowed to heal. It is a haven for parents who are truly innocent and provides them with support and a network to withstand false allegations that have destroyed their family, their social structure and their sanity. It is an open door for accuser to reconsider whether they have become unwitting victims of a childhood sexual abuse explanation for the symptoms that may be a result of other issues of trauma, unresolved emotions, or sense of not belonging or being loved. And finally, it is an opportune moment for those of us who practice hypnotherapy to reconsider the description of "memory" in terms of the accuracy of a recording camera and a computer retrieval system. It is also a time to re-examine what we say, how we say it, and what to do, while not forgetting the fact that the subconscious mind can confabulate.

We need to be mindful that the validity of hypnosis is once again in the courts being bandied about. Even though this controversy, for some of us, is far removed form our scope of hypnotic practice, the legal implications will still effect us. We may not find ourselves not only dispelling the myths and misconceptions of hypnosis but explaining as well how to follow false memories that can occur during regression.

Most importantly, the false memory controversy challenges belief systems. We must not bear in mind that recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse may be true, but they also my be false and that therapy and hypnosis are beneficial psychological healing modalities, but they cannot always provide a truthful accounting of past events.

"Hypnosis - Controversial Again"

Hypnosis as a professional practice has grown subsequent in the mind of the public, yet from time to time old Svengali myths get resurrected, and the public again becomes confused and apprehensive. Once again hypnosis has become controversial, but in this case as an indirect result of the explosive growth of accusations made by adult children of sexual abuse (primarily by parents) occurring in their infant and /or child years. These claims are based on so-called "repressed" memories that surface many years later. Many of these adults have been counseled to rectify or see, some form of restitution through litigation of the accused as part of the therapeutic "healing" process. Defense litigation in such cases has raised impropriety and incompetency on the part of the therapist or practitioner using hypnosis and/or suggestive techniques to recover "repressed" memories which false lead the client to believe that their current symptoms are due to being sexual abused as a child.

To assure a first-time client about the efficacy safety of hypnosis, a properly trained practitioner takes the time to explain about the "mind-body connection," the mind's ability to enter into various levels of natural and altered states of consciousness and the ability to accept or reject suggestion. However, when it come to the larger controversy of "repressed" memories of childhood sexual abuse, even explanations that "all hypnosis is self hypnosis" and the practitioner initiating the hypnotic state is merely a "facilitator" in the process not a "controller" seem to get lost in the hated accusations of implanting false memories through incompetence.

The intent here is to restrict the discussion to the use of hypnosis as it is being practiced within the context of "repressed" memory and to focus on five aspects of hypnosis that have become controversial within the "repressed" memory controversy. They include hypnosis competency, the use of hypnotic age regression, the psychological utilization of hypnosis, the use of hypnotic suggestibility, and knowledge of memory performance. Extended issues of satanic cult abuse, multiple personality and other dissociative disorders, while relevant, will not be included in this discussion.

To begin with, hypnosis competency is not a matter of higher educational training but a matter of competent hypnosis training and supervision. States, nationwide, are beginning to legislate for consistency in training programs and professional guidelines which will prove beneficial to the overall practice of hypnosis. Just because someone id trained in hypnosis does not make them competent to deal with psychological trauma issues without further psychological training. Likewise, just because someone is trained in psychotherapy it does not make them competent to use hypnosis without advanced training. It is beneficial to both practitioners and therapists to be well versed in the psychodynamics and the hypnotherapeutic implications of what happens between themselves and their clients.

Initially, there was formalized training for handling "repressed memories." Treatment protocol came from therapeutic interventions with clients who had either always remembered their childhood sexual abuse or their memory returned unsolicited at a later point in time. The popular self-help book "Courage to Heal" with its infamous quotation of "if you think you were sexual abused, you probably were" set the stage for the condition of sexual abuse denial If a therapist suspected that a client had been abused, it became their challenger to override the "denial" so that the client could heal through confronting the awful truth, and one way to access this "truth" was to induce hypnotic trance. Did these practitioners and therapist know enough about what happens at the different levels of trance, or how confabulation can occur or how a suggestible stat can exist without formal inductions? Those using hypnosis for "repressed" memory retrievals are criticized for incompetency because they have misused hypnosis to create a greater trauma to prove the existence of "repressed" memories despite the denial of the client.

The second controversial aspect of hypnosis is based on using age regression to access "repressed memories." The use of hypnotic age regression has been a long-standing effective and acceptable technique in uncovering the initial "trigger" mechanism to particular behavior. (including fears, anxieties and phobias) and many psychosomatic conditions. However, hypnotically working with the memory of the "triggering" event does not require the memory to be authenticated or validated. By disconnecting the emotional attachment to the presented memory most of these conditions are easily resolved.

When age regression is used to recover "repressed" memory, the intent has been to move beyond the denial state and recover those memories that will validate the childhood sexual experience. Current statistical reports verify the extensiveness of contemporary child physical and sexual abuse, but records or corroboration of incidents from 20, 30, and 40 years ago are almost nonexistent. Therefore, the reliance of confrontation and hypnotic age regression became of paramount importance to many therapists wanting to access these "repressed" memories. Considerable public debate and criticism have been directed at those therapist who diagnosed childhood sexual abuse based on vague symptoms and intuition and who overzealously attempted to validate the "repressed" memories through age regression.

What these therapist have failed to comprehend is that the various dynamics of suggestibility, including suggestibility under hypnosis, can potentially stimulated imagination and confabulation into false memories. Further, imagination and confabulation are known to be attributes of the hypnotic process and serve their own purpose when the intent is to make the subconscious mind receptive to beneficial and positive suggestions, or to purposefully create hallucinatory images. To use hypnosis age regression as a primary source of sexual abuse memory retrieval is legitimately controversial and suspect when the very inherent nature of hypnosis is one of suggestibility.

The third controversial aspect is the psychological utilization of hypnosis. Many successful psychological treatments include a variety of different treatment modalities, and many psychological issues have been benefited from subconscious information generated through hypnosis when judiciously used to restructure conscious beliefs and feelings, including those of "remembered" childhood sexual abuse.

Hypnosis again becomes controversial when it is used to focus on recreating the psychological trauma state. Working on the premise that the body encodes emotional trauma and that repeated trauma becomes part of a cumulative body memory, therapist would use the trance state to not only remember the sexual abuse but to release the body memory as well through abreaction. Much criticism has also been directed at this form of therapy since some therapists have made their clients repeatedly abreact the same body memories. (as it is a purging of body and mind until there is no more). Abreaction may, of course, occur during the hypnotic state as an unsolicited event, and they do appear to release tension, but professional hypnotherapy has never endorsed repeated or purposeful abreaction.

The fourth controversial aspect is the use of hypnotic suggestibility through visualization and guided imagery. The techniques have also been used with progressive relaxation, meditation, and dream analysis to provide beneficial results to the body and the subconscious mind. But, there are therapist who have managed to corrupt the process by using visualization and guided imagery to lead the client into a very suggestive state which presupposes that childhood sexual abuse has occurred. Cases have been documented where the therapist have said things like - "Imagine you are in your bedroom, who's there with you?" "Where does he place his hand?" "Who else is was there?" "Why didn't your mother protect you?"

Only recently has the process of forensic hypnosis been introduced into the psychological process. The early notorious cases of sexual abuse arrest of nursery owner and staff in California and New Jersey have been overturned on appeal, when review of the investigative technique used by officials was proved to be suggestive, leading and coercive on children. Investigators must now follow formal guidelines in a forensic manner when interviewing children. The application of a forensic approach to al cases of sexual abuse will help to remove unintentional suggestibility and reduce the controversy of hypnotic suggestibility.

And the fifth and final controversial aspect in the knowledge of memory performance. There have been a variety of analogies used to explain the different ways memory functions. One such early description was a long term memory being like a record groove that becomes deeper and deeper each time that specific memory was brought to mind. A more current analogy, in keeping with the latest scientific research, is the one of memory fragments from various parts of the brain being reassembled into a memory image acting like the random access memory of a computer. However, even this analogy only captures the process it does not capture all the nuances, distortions and fabrications of memory.

Many practitioners and therapist believe hypnosis is a means to retrieve undistorted truthful and complete memory accounts via the subconscious mind. Once such memory accounts is retrieved including emotional abreaction, psychological resolution can proceed. Proponents of "repressed" memory argue that this kind of memory id different from other memory because it is, specifically, sexual abuse, trauma memory which creates this "repressed" state (which of course can only by successfully relieved through their particular protocol).

Current memory research suggests that memory is reinterpreted, reassessed and reassembles each time it is brought to consciousness rather than a sequential series of images. Numerous experiments have yet to substantiate the existence of a "repressed" state where memory can be fully, and accurately recovered many years later in such great detail. Yet, each side of the memory debate tries to interpret the latest memory study as a defense for their position. Therefore, at this point in time, valid research is still pending and the "repressed" memory state is theoretical.

In terms of hypnosis, there is no question that memory can be manipulated. This is the position the legal courts have taken regarding what is called "hypnotically refreshed memory," and this has been the primary defense against claims of childhood sexual abuse based on the use of hypnosis. Hypnotically, imagination can be stimulated to create almost lifelike experiences with corresponding physical responses. Such suggestibility must also be realistically considered in the creation of potential false images of sexual abuse when a practitioner or therapist is seeking confirmation based on their judgment of denial or when a client has already been made suggestible by media, the conversations of others, or personal fantasy.

In summary, the application of hypnosis for the verification of "repressed" memories cannot be anything but controversial. In all fairness to all parties concerned, corroboration of accusations is imperative when possible and when it is not, healing should therapeutically proceed. It serves no ethical purpose to use hypnosis to 'witch hunt' for the real or mythical abuser.